Maria Jordan

My journey into authorship began with motherhood. When I had my daughter, I wanted to create a book that would allow me to have hard conversations with her and help other parents as well. I told her when she was younger that God made me the secret keeper, so she could tell me her secrets because I was afraid she might be in a situation where someone would say don't tell your parents. My girlfriends encouraged me to write a book about it, so I created my first book about a young girl being bullied and the secret keeper giving her advice, which was actually her mom who turned into the secret keeper. My second book, published in November, was about trusting your voice and teaching children to trust their intuition and tell the secret keeper when something doesn't feel right. In real estate and property management, I kind of fell into it after I went to Drexel University for music but ended up moving back home to Maryland. I just needed a job, so I got a job in leasing, which was easy for me because I loved speaking to people and communicating with people. From there, I just kind of grew in the industry. I moved to Atlanta as a leasing manager and then moved up the ranks to director of screening for Cortland. I've always had this entrepreneur spirit - in college, I started a company to produce fashion shows for organizations and charities. When I moved to Atlanta, I just fell into radio and media and interviewing celebrities, so it was just one door opened after another. Now I manage a team of 70 and we process all of the applications for Cortland, which means we have about 220 properties and process over 40,000 applications a year.